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Mitchell's drawings depict 'Men Being Put in Their Place' and explore fetishes such as male bondage, domination and spanking.

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Tuesday, 26 August 2014

A-Z of Fetish Artists - Tom of Finland - 2

Kake

Short
narrative picture series like 'The Careless Biker' in Part 1 were a
favourite technique for Tom right from his earliest drawings and they
eventually developed into the Kake series of picture stories
(1968-82) which have come to dominate our view of Tom's work. It's
probably the character of Kake that inspires this affection more than
the pictures which are simple, unpolished line drawings (the better
quality covers are later substitutions). Nevertheless they do contain
some gems and a number of extraordinarily erotic sequences exploiting
Tom's powers of exaggeration and visual trickery which can never be
matched by mere photographs or film. The series conveniently spans
most of Tom's career period after he became famous so it's quite
instructive to look at it in some detail.

On
the Amazon website the Complete
Kake Comics are described (presumably by Taschen, the publisher)
thus:-

“Kake lived up to this
moniker (the word 'Fucker' on his T-shirt), a sort of
post-Stonewall, hyper-masculine Johnny Appleseed traveling the world
on his motorcycle to spread the seeds of liberated, mutually
satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex....... Return
with Kake to the days when men were men, sex was carefree, and
everyone wore a big thick mustache.”

(N.B.
Johnny Appleseed was an eccentric folk hero who travelled the US
planting apple trees, don't ask me what the connection is!)

Well, everyone's
entitled to their opinion, I suppose, including publishers out to
make a buck. Actually you'd be hard-pressed to find a motorcycle in
any of the Kake stories. Tom uses them in earlier work but by this
time he'd joined the real gay world where leather apparel (and bikes)
are mostly for show, not riding. I'm nit-picking of course, but as
far as I'm concerned, the vision of an altruistic Kake spreading the
notion of carefree sex is a very selective misreading of Tom' s work
that does him no favours as an artist.

1. The Intruder

There's
a narrative link between the first 5 tales where Kake is portrayed as
a reckless philanderer who takes other men wherever he can find them
starting in the first story with one who is portrayed as straight and
young enough to be still living with his father. The lad is
forcefully seduced in his own bed after Kake enters uninvited through
the window. This story thus combines two near-universal gay
fantasies, (a) being taken by an intruder and (b) opening up the
horizons (as it were) of a supposedly straight man. Fortunately for
Kake, the object of his amorous attentions passes up numerous
opportunities to cry out for help or escape, but I'm not sure this
would constitute a defence in court. Kake's explorations are abruptly
curtailed when the lad's father arrives and brings this carnival of
political incorrectness to an appropriate conclusion by giving Kake a
taste of his own medicine while his son looks on.

Tom
moves on to safer ground in Kake 2 with a consensual encounter on the
beach (which will have been chosen by the street-wise hero for it's known cruising
potential). The men's passion evolves out of
a shared cigarette, no doubt echoing Tom's youthful cruising
experiences (he is approaching 50 years of age at this time). The
measured pace of seduction contrasts with first story. Kake regularly
suffers some humorous reverse or painful comeuppance in these
escapades and this time he loses his expensive, temporarily discarded
leathers to an opportunist thief. He is arrested for public nudity
(in Kake 3) by a good humoured policeman who escorts him to the
police station there to be summarily subjected to a fierce lashing
(below) and screwing by all officers present, before being locked up. This
unexpected cameo of police brutality comes as a jolt but is highly
erotic. It paves the way for the culmination of the narrative in Kake
5.

2. Cop's Brutality

This
scene is grounded in fact. There's no record of Tom being arrested
while out cruising but it's quite likely he witnessed it or knew of
men who were caught. (If not in Finland, he also visited pre-war
Germany and Britain in the 50's). At the height of the witch-hunts
offenders were routinely humiliated by the police, harshly
interrogated and pressurised to reveal names and assist in the
entrapment of others under the threat of public exposure, which might
lead to loss of their job, family and friends. Some sensitive and
vulnerable souls were driven to suicide by the ordeal but other gay
men who lived through these times seem to have enjoyed the thrill of
the danger. Most were never caught and if they were strong in
character and not in sensitive situations they had less to fear
anyway. The actual punishments were usually relatively mild and once
suffered, exposure lost it's sting.

Tom
seems to be one of these and able to look back and reinvent the
unpleasantness as a sexual fantasy, it's probably human nature to
sexualise danger and fear but it gives us some insight into his
character. He even introduces a more sympathetic (and receptive)
Policeman who samples Kake's cock in the cell and lends him his
uniform (another gay fantasy) so he can escape.

3. Boys in the Wood

Freed
from jail, Kake makes for the woods, a typical cruising ground to
this day. Here the magnetism of Kake's borrowed uniform generates
another sexual encounter with two young men in the woods. It's a
dangerous attraction for them, but Tom shows, step by step, the
correct procedure for authenticating intentions. Kake glances
backward invitingly after passing them, waits on a bench further down
the path, then a mutual show of bulges (above) wraps up the
negotiation and kick starts the action. You can always tell when an artist knows what he is talking about.

4. Punishment of the Thief

At
the height of the excitement Kake spots the thief watching them in
his stolen leathers and manages to catch him and beat him as a
punishment (above). The charming, awkward stance of the lad holding
the left leg in this picture suggests the quarry is really
struggling! This image looks like it's been serially attacked by
internet croppers but it's just a result of too little time being
available to redraw the scene.

5. Cuffed to a Tree

Kake
uses the opportunity to seed his chastened captive and then cuffs him
to an overhanging branch. Interestingly this is the first time the handcuffs get used in this story and it's plainly thoroughly arousing for all concerned. Compare with Tam's similar depiction of arousal during bondage.

6. A Further Lashing for the Thief

Kake's new friends take their turn at
dishing out the punishment. Encouragingly for fetish fans, it turns
out the villain is just as aroused by his punishment as
his captors are. This sequence is very good.

7. Doubtful Rescue

In a
devious finale the culprit is handcuffed to a bench, seated alongside
the borrowed police uniform. He is left to make his explanations as
best he can to a policeman who can be seen approaching through the
trees. We already know how police in this town deal with public
nudity offences but are left to conjecture the consequences of being
in possession of a stolen Police uniform.

Carefree sex eh? You can't
beat it.

(Notice
there's another veiled allusion to the practice of sounding in this
image - see also part 1).

In
theses five books, Tom does indeed depict a man who enjoys sex
wherever he can find it. But if you waive the humorous gloss, the sex
is often non-consensual, Kake simply helps himself and hopes for the
best. He is no altruist but a bawdy adventurer in the best traditions
of classical literature. The plot line is simple but clever, funny
and sexy. The key ingredients are theft and retribution against a
background of police dishing out summary justice and incorporates a
particularly vindictive revenge twist. This is not mere harmless
fantasy, it's much more substantial and interesting than that! To
package it up as a heartening fantasy of sexual freedom is selling
Tom way short of the truth.

8. Spurned

At
this point in the series (No 6) Tom takes an unexpected direction.
The woodland storyline peters out with Kake stealing a muscular
Sailor from his female pick-up. The indignant woman storms off to
report the matter to a policeman who is seen patrolling in the
bushes. We tend to see Tom's cops as a generic fantasy of no
particular country but the uniforms are essentially mid-European and
the sailor's German-style uniform is a reminder that we (and Tom) are
in Europe and this is circa 1968 when gay law reform, let alone
liberation has still barely begun, so the woman's action in involving
the police is particularly spiteful (and foolish too since she is
also flouting the law). As luck would have it it the Policeman likes
the look of Tom and his matelot and joins in, lending the woman his
truncheon (nightstick) to keep her occupied.

Tom
can't have won many friends of any persuasion with this storyline. He
experimented with female characters more than once in his career but
it seems to have been either at the behest of advisers or simply as a
way of imbuing men with the always-alluring “essence of straight”.
You can see from his attempts at drawing women that he never saw them
as beautiful and he never portrayed them in a positive light either,
but variously as domineering, petulant or simply voracious for sex.

In
this instance, they are competition, there to be thwarted by Kake,
who rescues the sailor from his own folly and continues his
systematic exploration of gay fantasies by testing the belief that
all men are available for gay sex if offered the right incentive.
This myth no doubt gained credence in the years of oppression (when
Tom was in his 30's and active) by the necessity for all gays to 'act
straight' in public. Most gay men will enjoy seeing the 'conversion'
scenario acted out with such a fine specimen and I suppose it must
have some confidence boosting, empowering effect too. However,
although Sailors are supposed to be more amenable than most in gay
folklore, (due to being constantly cooped up with other men at sea),
I wouldn't recommend Kake's 'touch and show' technique.

9. Joining the Daisy Chain

The
artistic drift continues into Kake 7 as the hero moves on to a public
toilet for a daisy chain orgy featuring an assortment of male
stereotypes. It's the first story in the series where the 'carefree
sex' tag truly does apply with no dark overtones - unless you count
the late arrival at the ball of the Hell's Angel impersonator who
'introduces' himself by ripping apart the pants of the man at the
end. The drawings are raunchy enough, but it's an unmemorable,
plot-less, pot boiler and with it's array of contrasting characters
it inevitably stumbles into the minefield of fleeting fashions in
clothing.

However
it is notable for it's chronicling of yet another standard gay
pick-up place, the 'cottage', probably in the UK judging by the
design detail, which might make this the first of Kake's world
travels (long promised in the publisher's blurb). This story also
features the first appearance in the series by a black man,
stereotyped by his cock-size of course. He's also given a showy
outfit more likely to have been seen on the streets of Harlem (or
possibly Germany) rather than the London of this time, but it does
paint him as the most affluent and best-dressed man in the group, so
it's not entirely unsympathetic. There's plenty of other material by
Tom demonstrating that he found black men attractive and I will
return to this in a later article. Notice, however, how this series
continually reflects the happenings and issues of it's time, without
campaigning or climbing on the political soapbox . I think it's one
of the things that makes Tom's work so real to us, even 50 years on.

10. Searching for Contrabrand

Topicality
is even more apparent in the next of this odd group of stories (No 8)
which bizarrely features an aircraft hi-jacking scenario. It's an
attempt to portray Kake as an accidental hero. Picked out by the
hijacker to provide some in-flight entertainment, he is escorted to
the toilet for private attention, but his sexual performance proves
so distracting that he is able to get hold of the hijacker's gun and
take him prisoner, thereby saving all the passengers.

This
is strange fare. It's pre-9/11 of course. Aircraft hijackings around
the early 70's usually had benign outcomes but they were still
terrifying experiences for the passengers and never the stuff of
light entertainment, let alone erotic fantasy. Earlier Kake stories
are politically incorrect but if Tom was courting controversy, this
choice of a sensitive and non-sexual topic seems clumsy and foolish.
He was pretty prolific around this time with his new found fame so
perhaps he just took his eye off the ball.

Ironically,
Tom spots the alternative erotic potential of the customs/security
search (above) and exploits it for the first few pages of the tale, but then
discards it in favour of the hijack subject. It's a shame since there
are considerable comic possibilities involving 'searches' at
departure and arrival with scope for smuggling, detention and
punishment ingredients as a follow up too. (Sigh!)

Tom
repeated the 'Kake as hero' experiment more successfully in No 23
'Wild West' and there's another non-Kake example in the “Jack in
the Jungle” series.

11. Errant Husband

Story
No 9, 'Coq d'Or', marks the last in this seemingly confused group
before Tom returns to form with 'Raunchy Truckers'. Kake's plane has
landed in France and he makes straight for a seedy waterfront pub
full of drunks, down and outs and men and women of easy virtue, both.
It's yet another standard gay venue of the time and he manages to
capture some of the atmosphere and danger. Kake picks up a
sexily-dressed sailor who might be his brother, their faces are so
alike (see above". This 'stereotype drift' is a sign that Tom's attention is not
fully engaged and the action drawings in this set are not all they
might be. However there's an interesting twist when a wandering
husband gatecrashing the party is literally hauled out by his angry,
unattractive wife and, in a rare victory for womenkind in Tom's land,
taken home for retribution. It's a novel humiliation scenario that
makes a nice picture for connoisseurs of that particular art form
(above).

1 comment:

Brill.analysis of kake series. Never seen them as post Stonewal but rather pre -1969 in their anarchy versus society tone. Tof had of course an important spanking fantasy, and the martinet wielding cops series is one of the best.

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Welcome to 'mitchmen' at blogger where Mitchell the gay fetish artist talks about his drawings and the erotic imagery that inspires them.
"I've been drawing since I was a teenager and it has always been an outlet for my innermost feelings and frustrations! My erotic art development was galvanised by the discovery of Tom of Finland's work and, inspired by the wealth of material on the internet, it continues to develop into diverse fetishes and occasionally gruesome interests!"